Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance From Chinese Consumers Perspective: Application of Value Engineering Theory

Based on the perspective of consumers and the method of value engineering, this paper uses "CSR expectation deviate level" to measure corporate social responsibility, and discusses the influence of corporate social responsibility on financial performance and its action path. This paper collected the questionnaire survey data of 878 consumers and the panel data of 98 listed companies from 2009 to 2012. The empirical results show that: (1) Consumers pay more attention to products and services, charity, environmental protection and their responsibilities to employees, and less attention to their responsibilities to shareholders or creditors and partners; (2) Corporate social responsibility is negatively correlated with financial performance, and corporate marketing ability plays a moderating role in it. That is, the smaller the gap between the level of corporate social responsibility fulfilled by enterprises and consumers' expectations, the better the financial performance of enterprises, which also reminds enterprises that they need to rationally allocate corporate social responsibility resources and constantly cultivate their own marketing capabilities, so as to better meet the level of corporate social responsibility expected by consumers. The value engineering method quantifies consumers' value perception of corporate social responsibility, which has a certain practical guiding role. Of course, there are some limitations in this paper, and future research can further explore the potential impact mechanism.